


You're not a stranger if you're always on my mind

by Remigius



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Deaths referenced, Mollymauk Tealeaf (referenced) - Freeform, Other, brief description of a corpse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29951835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remigius/pseuds/Remigius
Summary: They're both changing over time. She thinks that they can make the most of it, they always do.
Relationships: Cree & Lucien (Critical Role)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	You're not a stranger if you're always on my mind

It starts with the book.

First when he says nothing about its existence to Vess Derogna, and then when he spends all night staring at it. Whenever it’s open, he’s enraptured and transfixed like a man possessed and it sends shivers up Cree’s spine. Lucien has always been a smart man, if a little impulsive. She trusts him beyond anyone and everyone she’s ever known. It’s always been her and him against the world, and no odd fixation will drive her away from his side, of course.

Yet she hates the book with a burning passion.

*

The eyes appear slowly. The first—his hand—she spots over breakfast and says nothing of it lest Vess take interest in what Lucien is doing at night. He has dark circles under his eyes, he’s a little more sluggish than he has been on the first leg of the journey before they’d found the journal in a crushed alcove while looking for relics. Him pocketing the journal hadn’t bothered her, they’d never agreed to tell Vess everything they knew or found… but it did make her suspicious even then.

She rubs the side of her face against one of his horns, giving a soft chirp at the back of her throat that only he will understand. He hums in return, pressing the curve of his horn against her head in a light headbutt. She is told tieflings mean it as a term of love, familial or otherwise. She chooses to believe that’s true. He curls his tail with hers, as if reassuring her silently.

She understands, as always. Lucien is her best friend, her companion for nearly her entire life. Both orphaned and given the Claret Order where they were told that their lives would serve a better cause. Lucien was a terror as a child, ramming his horns into people just because he could, shoving other children. Establishing an order of dominance quickly with the other orphans that he was not to be messed with. But not Cree.

He took to her quickly, finding a place at her side as easily as if he’d always been meant to fit there. She was always the exclusion of his temper, his deep-set sadness that he’d been abandoned to the world to walk it alone, with no one to love him. “We have a destiny,” Lucien used to say, when they were curled up in their shared blankets, near nose to nose with their tails wrapped together. “I think we can change the entire world.”

If anyone could, Cree will always believe it would be Lucien. His will is unmatched, his ability to withstand any amount of pain to achieve his goals both terrifying and something to admire. She doesn’t mind being his sidekick, always at his side and listening to his plans. Lucien is a manic sort of genius, his plans often half-baked and yet somehow always working out in his favor. Slowly, their group grows: Zoran, Otis, Tyffial and Jurrell.

With it grew Lucien’s power. He was no longer just the strongest of all the orphans, backed by her. He was his own sort of leader that threatened the power of the Claret Order in terms of loyalty.

By the time he’d whispered, “Would you leave with me?” she already knew what her answer always would be: at his side, she’d go anywhere.

*

The other eyes followed not long after the first. One on his chest, one in his back. They continued until there were nine and Lucien with an eerie amount of confidence stated, “They want me to become the Nonagon.”

The ridge of fur against Cree’s spine stood on end against her will, tail bristling outward. “They?” She asks, with a calmness she doesn’t really feel.

“The Nine.” Lucien says, then puts a hand over hers and squeezes. “Don’t worry about it, it will be as it always has been.”

She wishes it were true. Lucien changes, slowly. His cruelty to others outside of their group had amused her mostly, but it twists into something darker over time. Lucien is consumed by his dreams, seemingly going without sleep and yet growing impossibly stronger. His powers finesse into something far stronger than Cree has ever seen before.

When he says that he will be the vessel of a god, she believes it. She believes it, and she hates it in equal measure.

Her Lucien had a measure of innocence that he no longer doesn’t, an odd sort of kindness that Lucien starts to lose slowly. He’s never cruel to his Tomb Takers, of course. He is charismatic in his cruelty everywhere else. The residents of Shady Creek Run learn to fear him. The Iron Shepherds stay away from him. The rest of the world views him as an eccentricity. They don’t understand, as she does, that this isn’t who he is. Not really.

There was a time where there was light behind his eyes, a smile on his lips, a press of his horns to the top of her head before they curled up for sleep.

She wonders when that disappeared, and why she didn’t notice sooner.

*

His death rocks her world, and the Tomb Takers scatter like dandelion fluff to the wind. Lucien had been smart to send them all away, but she couldn’t bring herself to travel far. She dreams every night about where she’d buried his body, waiting for his return as he said he would.

Lucien never lies. It’s one of his biggest flaws, one of the things that she loves best about him. To her, she knows he has never told a lie. Her trust is stalwart. She will wait as long as it takes for him to wake up, then she can return to him and heal him and take him home to the others.

They can try again without Vess Derogna, the traitorous bitch.

They can try again with the Nonagon.

Weeks, then months pass. The year anniversary of his death, she drinks until she can hardly stand.

“I didn’t realize the work was so hard on you.” The Gentleman says. She knows not if he says it out of concern or to mock her. She doesn’t care either way.

“I lost someone I loved.” She tells him, “More than anything in this world.”

“Ah.” He says, expression solemn. “Me too.”

*

When she next sees him, he’s dressed flamboyantly. His hair is much longer than she remembers, neatly flowing about his shoulders. His horns dangle with jewelry. She knows immediately that this is not her Lucien, nor is it the Nonagon. This is someone else, resurrected in his body.

Still… it was his. The body remembers, even if his mind doesn’t, she hopes.

When she calls him Lucien, she sees panic in his eyes. Anger. Confusion.

Her heart plummets in her chest.

She can restore his memory or bring him to Tyffial who has other methods of altering the mind. Stitching it back together. She can drag him away from these people who doesn’t understand who he is, how important he is, how much he can do—

But she does recognize two things immediately: there’s a light in his eyes she hadn’t seen in a very long time. There’s a life in him that Lucien had stopped living. The second is that he’s _happy._

And so for the first time in her life, she disobeys Lucien’s orders and she stops waiting. She lets him go. She sees the barbarian lean over him to talk to him, the easy way that they fall against each other. She is to this person what Cree had been to Lucien… and she will not steal that from someone else.

Her Lucien is gone, dead to the woods in which she buried him. Scattered across the Astral Sea in billions of pieces that will take her a long, long time to collect. And she will, for him. Even if it means that he will never be whole again without his body, she can harbor his soul and keep him safe. They were always meant to be side by side, after all.

She is loyal.

So, Cree gathers every piece into her necklace, close to her heart. Every piece she can find, she stores away until finally she’s gathered every single piece of him. Lucien is safe with her, looped around her neck. Settled against her fur. A warmth and power to her necklace like an attunement would feel. On occasion she can hear him like a whisper into her ear, but when she turns to look no one is there.

He is. He always is. Just as she is always with him.

*

The orc tells her that their companion—Lucien—is dead. The orc calls him ‘Molly’, but she doesn’t spare a thought to it. Lucien’s body is unoccupied again, and she will not squander the chance before someone else is resurrected in it. She doesn’t quite have the coin for his resurrection—she doesn’t have as much coin as she hoped she would at this point, but Shady Creek Run has always lacked on finances other than whatever the Gentleman holds for himself.

She scrapes together every gold she can manage—aside from the cost of contacting the others— before she is finally ready. She doesn’t give the Gentleman much warning, none of his contractors do. She is uninterested in keeping the blood samples she uses to hunt with, she has no intention of returning to basic mercenary work when Lucien will need her for so much more.

The longer they spent apart, the more she understood:

Lucien is special. Lucien will become a god. Lucien has always been destined for something else, and she alongside him. She needn’t have been concerned about him changing—that is what happens when a mortal harnesses the power of the gods.

Why ‘Molly’ had been unable to use it to save himself, she isn’t entirely sure. She doesn’t care. All she knows is that Lucien is hers, and she will never let him go again.

The jacket is muddy, tattered. Dirty. She frowns at it, choosing to ignore it in lieu of stabbing her shovel into the earth. The sun is shining in the sky, hot on her fur. She doesn’t care. She will do whatever it takes to get him back, do whatever ritual that Lucien needs to return. She can feel the thrum of him in her necklace, near hot to the touch.

“Soon.” She tells him. “You recognize this body. That’s a good sign.”

*

The others arrive much sooner than she’d expected. His corpse is decayed, skull and flesh, flowers growing gently around him. Cree takes off her necklace, presses it to her forehead before placing it against Lucien’s skull.

Of all the flesh that has withered away, his collective nine eyes have not.

That, if nothing else, steels her resolve. He has a mission to this world, and this is hers: he will live again.

And he does.

“They left you a note.” She informs him, handing him the dirty jacket and the note tucked inside. Part of it has been soaked through at one point, obscuring part of the words. The intent is still clear.

“The Mighty Nein?” Lucien asks, turning his head to her. “Am I supposed to remember who these people are?”

 _Are you?_ She wonders. _Are you still Molly?_ Perhaps Molly was the part of him that she’d known in Lucien when he was younger. Molly was the part of him that was still alive, fiercely, passionately. Like he had been, her precious tiefling best friend. Her heart in the way that truly matters: loyalty. Kindness. Friendship. What neither of them had from anyone else in the world for so long.

“No.” She tells him, offering her hand. He takes it immediately, without question. “We go where you go.”

“On the way, will you tell me about them?” Lucien asks, raising an eyebrow. He still has dirt in his hair, a few pieces of jewelry here and there.

“There’s little to tell.” Cree shrugs, “They didn’t know you. They only knew a man named Molly.”

“Molly?” Lucien asks, and there’s an odd tone she can’t place. Then: “how interesting.”

“Welcome home.” She tells him.

He curls his tail against hers.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Lucien and Molly both, and I love Cree. They all deserve happiness, in whatever way they can find it. 
> 
> Queerplatonic relationships are some of my faves, and that was the vein this was written in. 
> 
> Title is from Past Life by Tame Impala, which is the song that inspired me to write this fic. 
> 
> **For my friends in our critical role group chat who believe in Molly just as much as I do, I love you guys. ♥**


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